Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

Ending a Taking Economy and Creating a Giving Economy Part 2

There no longer seems to be a rational alignment between economic cost and value. This means questioning so-called conventional wisdom and critically considering whether or not to own property or even to go to college.

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The Secrets of Self-Employment: Overhead and Capital Accumulation

There are still opportunities to not just earn a wage, but the overhead, profit and capital skimmed by global corporations. So how can someone earning $15 an hour as an employee get ahead? The short answer is: they can't. One worker earning $15/hour will struggle to get ahead, which I define as building capital that generates an income stream.

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Two Sets of Solutions as the Status Quo Crumbles

Two charts illustrate Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform: this chart of the S-Curve of financialization, leverage, debt, central planning, regulatory capture and globalization--that is, the engines of modern "growth"--depicts the inevitable stagnation and decline of these dynamics as overcapacity, debt saturation and diminishing returns take hold.

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The Ruling Elite Has Lost the Consent of the Governed

Brimming with hubris and self-importance, the ruling Elite and mainstream media cannot believe they have lost the consent of the governed. Every ruling Elite needs the consent of the governed: even autocracies, dictatorships and corporatocracies ultimately rule with the consent, however grudging, of the governed.

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Welcome to Neocolonialism, Exploited Peasants!

In my latest interview with Max Keiser, Max asked a question of fundamental importance: (I paraphrase, as the interview has not yet been posted): now that the current iteration of capitalism has occupied every corner of the globe, where can it expand to for its "growth"?

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What Happens When Rampant Asset Inflation Ends?

Yesterday I explained why Revealing the Real Rate of Inflation Would Crash the System. If asset inflation ceases, the net result would be the same: systemic collapse. Why is this so? In effect, central banks and states have masked the devastating stagnation of real income by encouraging households to take on debt to augment declining income and by inflating assets via quantitative easing and lowering interest rates and bond yields to near-zero (or...

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Where Will All the Money Go When All Three Market Bubbles Pop?

Since the stock, bond and real estate markets are all correlated, it's a question with no easy answer. Everyone who's not paid to be in denial knows stocks, bonds and real estate are in bubbles of one sort or another. Real estate is either an echo bubble or a bubble that exceeds the previous bubble, depending on how attractive the market is to hot-money investors.

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This Is How Quiet Fascism Works

So my little-visited Wikipedia entry was minding its own business, not bothering anyone, until I dared to criticize the Clinton Foundation. The next day, my Wikipedia entry was taken out and shot by a mysterious "editor." It was just coincidence, right, that my Wikipedia entry had been available for years without offending anyone, and then suddenly it's deleted the day after I dared to criticize the Clinton Foundation.

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USA 2017-2020: An Ungovernable Nation?

The U.S. needs to overthrow a corrupt, self-serving elite. Regardless of who wins the presidency, a much larger question looms: will the U.S. be ungovernable 2017-2020? There are multiple sources of the question.

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It’s Time We Crush the Putrid Roach Motels of Philanthro-Crony-Capitalism, Starting with the Clinton Foundation

Granted, the fantasy of philanthrocapitalism is appealing: take a bunch of fabulously successful entrepreneurial billionaires, grant their foundations tax-free status, and then unleash them on the world as philanthropists who will solve problems by applying the incentives of capitalism.

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Is The US Dollar Set To Soar?

Hating the U.S. dollar offers the same rewards as hating a dominant sports team: it feels righteous to root for the underdogs, but it's generally unwise to let that enthusiasm become the basis of one's bets. Personally, I favor the emergence of non-state reserve currencies, for example, blockchain crypto-currencies or precious-metal-backed private currencies--currencies which can't be devalued by self-serving central banks or the private elites...

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Fun with Fake Statistics: The 5 percent “Increase” in Median Household Income Is Pure Illusion

Supporters of the status quo nearly wet their pants with joy when the Census Bureau reported that real (adjusted for inflation) median household income rose 5.2% between 2014 and 2015. Too bad it was completely bogus: the supposed increase in everyone's income is pure statistical trickery.

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You Want to Fix the Economy? Then First Fix Healthcare

We don't just deserve an affordable, sustainable healthcare system--we're doomed to bankruptcy without one. What is blindingly obvious to employers but apparently invisible to the average zero-business-experience mainstream pundit is this: if you want to fix the economy, you must first fix healthcare.

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Are The ‘Invisible Americans’ the Key Players in This Election?

For the bottom 90% of American households, the "prosperity" of the "recovery" since 2009 is a bright shining lie. The phrase is from a history of the Vietnam War, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. Just as the Vietnam War was built on lies, propaganda, PR and rigged statistics(the infamous body counts--civilians killed as "collateral damage" counted as "enemy combatants"), so too is the "recovery" nothing but a pathetic...

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Trump, Trade and Taxes

Donald Trump has made trade agreements a central issue in this presidential election, declaring trade treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as unfair and subject to cancellation or renegotiation. Setting aside the issue of whether presidents can cancel trade treaties via executive orders, let's look at the underlying issue: the erosion of manufacturing and entry-level job opportunities that lead to middle-class security...

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Why the Deep State Is Dumping Hillary

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What If We’re in a Depression But Don’t Know It?

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Why the Coming Wave of Defaults Will Be Devastating

In an economy based on borrowing, i.e. credit a.k.a. debt, loan defaults and deleveraging (reducing leverage and debt loads) matter. Consider this chart of total credit in the U.S. Note that the relatively tiny decline in total credit in 2008 caused by subprime mortgage defaults (a.k.a. deleveraging) very nearly collapsed not just the U.S. financial system but the entire global financial system.

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The Three Stages of Empire

I consider it self-evident that we are in the third and final stage of self-serving Imperial decay. Though Edward Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century CE to the Third is not specifically on the rise and fall of empires, it does sketch out the three stages of Empire.

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The ZIRP/NIRP Gods and their PhD Priesthood Have Failed

The priesthood's insane obsession with forcing people to spend their savings by punishing savers with ZIRP/NIRP has failed spectacularly for a simple reason: it completely misunderstands human psychology. Let's start with a simple chart of the Fed Funds Rate, which the Federal Reserve has pinned near zero for years.

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